Jessey (Jacie), Henry°

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JESSEY (Jacie), HENRY°

JESSEY (Jacie ), HENRY ° (1601–1663), English philo-Semite and Baptist divine. Jessey was inclined to literal observance of biblical precepts (including the seventh-day Sabbath, i.e., on Saturday). He corresponded with *Manasseh Ben Israel in Amsterdam about the Lost Ten Tribes and dedicated to him his Glory of Jehudah and Israel (London, 1653). Jessey was among those who participated in 1655 in the Whitehall Conference (see *England), and later published an account of its proceedings. He subsequently collected £300 from English Christians to send to R. Nathan *Spira in Amsterdam for distressed Jews in Jerusalem, whose suffering he described in the anonymous An Information, Concerning the Present State of the Jewish Nation in Europe and Judea (London, 1658).

bibliography:

C. Roth, Life of Menasseh Ben Israel (1934), index; N. Sokolow, History of Zionism, 2 (1919), 212–5; Roth, Mag Bibl, index; jhsem, 2 (1935), 99–104. add. bibliography: odnb online; E.G. van der Wall, "A Philo-Semitic Millenarian on the Reconciliation of Jews and Christians," in: D.S. Katz and J.I. Israel (eds.), Sceptics, Millenarians, and Jews (1990).

[Cecil Roth]

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